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hardware tech site for the rest of us.
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AOpen XC Cube EX915 AOpen’s drive tray impressed me from the first moment I saw it. The tray is accessible from the right side of the case with the cover removed. A single thumb screw holds it in place. Removing this screw allows the tray to be pulled out with minimal effort.
The HDD tray attaches to the base of a larger 5 ¼” tray designed to accommodate an optical drive and a 3 ½ device such as another hard drive, card reader or floppy drive. Removal of two screws allows the tray to be pulled up and out for drive installation and better access to the board underneath.
BIOS AOpen has stuck with the AwardBIOS for the XC-Cube. This is the BIOS that most of us are most comfortable with. Let's explore a bit at what you are most likely to tinker with.
Starting within the Advanced Chipset Features menu we find memory and VGA settings. Beginning with the RAM, a manual or an automatic setting is available.
Rather than cite lots of numbers, here are the available memory timings.
Still on the Advanced Chipset Features menu are the VGA settings. You can keep things stock and simple by using the onboard VGA that is the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator. The onboard VGA is perfectly acceptable for about anything but the fast frame rates needed for gaming. In that case, you really will need to be looking at an add in card. Remember that the add in card needs to be PCI or PCI-Express.
In the PC Health menu which AOpen styles the Silent BIOS/HW Monitor menu, we find a small disappointment. Having a CPU warning temperature is nice. This allows you to select a trip point where your machine will sound an audio alarm if it gets too hot passing the preset trip point. What was missing here is a shutdown temperature point that goes hand in hand with a warning temp point. Not the end of the world but a small ding all the same. The fan mode has two settings, Smart Control and Full Speed. Smart Control let's the machine adjust the fan speed based on the temperature the system detects at the processor. Full speed is just that, full speed which on our review unit was a not so sleep friendly 5600 RPM.
Pg 1 - Introduction |
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